The Black Widow
by Jolz17
Summary: The Black Widow was as cold and calculating as the Arachnid for which she was named after. She was the best Russia had to offer. But when an arrow appeared in the door, she knew she had been marked for death by the infamous Hawkeye and, for the first time in a long time, she felt panic.
1. Chapter 1

As cold and calculating as the Arachnid she was named after, the Black Widow lured unsuspecting men to their deaths by fluttering her eyelashes, stroking their egos and getting them to drop their guards. From a young age, the unconventional assassin acquired and developed a very specific skill set. A skill set that put her on the map. To potential employers and hired assassins alike.  
Not for the first time, and she knew for certain that it would not be the last, the Black Widow was marked for death. The assassin trailing her this time was unfamiliar and worked in a frustratingly unusual style than any other assassin she had encountered. For the first time in the two decades she had been alive, she felt her heart elevate as she experienced the unfamiliar emotion of panic. It derived from the fact that she couldn't work out what her follower's next move was going to be, when he was next going to appear and how he planned on killing her.  
The Black Widow ducked her head further into the maroon head scarf. She wore the garment because it fulfilled two satisfyingly useful objectives: one, it half concealed her face in shadows, causing some difficulty for her tailing assassin to catch a glimpse of her face in full view; and secondly, the alluring sense of modesty and attractive shyness that was created by the simple concealing garment had caught the attention of her mark. Antonio Gravardas was a well-known Italian businessman who dealt in the export business. His front was the exportation of car parts, but behind the mask of the transaction of various scraps of metal, there was the concealed arsenal of the best weaponry Italy had to offer. She had cared very little for his two-faced dealings. But then he appeared in Russia and was working to strike a deal with Dimitri Vloskov, an opposing territory leader of her current employers. Now, she cared very much. Well, about as much as 50,000 rubles would allow anyway.  
After six days and already two contacts with the mark, who seemed unaware of the initial threat of coincidentally bumping into the same woman twice since arriving in Russia, the Black Widow was ready to move onto phase two.  
She provoked him into initiating a conversation by suggesting they had something in common: she knew he could not buy strawberries for he was allergic. Now, so was she. The couple stood at the strawberry market stall for ten minutes before he invited her as his plus one to the club he was at that night, a club owned by Dimitri Vloskov.  
That wasn't the hard part. She had played this scene over and over in her life. The mark sees a pretty face, is initially attracted, his defences get lowered and there you have it: he has revealed the secrets he swore not to. The marks never see what is coming because to them, this pretty little face is just something to do for entertainment whilst they are on business. Their plans are always to carelessly drop her when they need to leave anyway. She takes satisfaction in the fact that she gets to drop them first.  
With her invitation to Vloskov's club in the bag, she returned to her safe house to focus on the hard part, and the thing that has been bugging her all week. The assassin who had been on her tail for six days. Well, six days that she knew of anyway. She experienced the momentary panic when the thought of her _unknowingly_ being followed flashed through her mind. But she quickly dismissed the thought. She was the Black Widow, she was always one step ahead, not two steps behind.  
She booted up her encrypted laptop to play back the video from the small camera she had strapped in the fold of her coat collar that morning. For the next four and a half hours, she studied the footage determinedly, her eyes narrowed on the screen, barely blinking as she did not know the face of the person she was looking for.  
After the four hours of fixated staring at the laptop screen, she suddenly jumped from her statue like state and hit pause. She slid out the photographs from a folder she had hidden behind the wardrobe just in case, and spread them across her desk. Her green eyes flickered to the laptop as she held up one particular photograph by the screen. The photographs were taking in very different places at very different times but had one thing in common: and that _thing_ was looking back at her from the photo with blue eyes framed with windswept blonde hair.  
"Gotcha".

And Natalia Romonova's red-headed reflection in the laptop screen half smiled.

* * *

The unusual style of her shadow's trailing techniques derived from the fact that he did not conform to any type of spy training she had ever come across. Any spy who knows where his intended mark is and what they are doing, moves in closer for the kill. As logic would follow. Natalia was positive that this spy knew who she was already after being spotted in her vicinity at least twice now, but he seemed to have dropped back. Was it incompetence? She couldn't put her life on the hope of another spy's potential lacking abilities. If he had dropped back with a purpose, she figured that purpose was to watch from a distance. But why? Who watches from a distance?  
She glared at the reflection of her brush in the mirror as she prepared herself for tonight's events. She would have to put the unusual behaviour out of her mind if she wanted to get the job done tonight.  
_'Sure, that'll be easy,'_ she thought,_ 'it might only cost me my life.'_  
Then she laughed a little._ 'Yeah, right'_

She was gorgeous. She had to be. Her red curls were tied elegantly in a loose bun at the back of her head. Her dress, the same green as her eyes, exposed her back and ended above her knees.  
She was easily allowed access to the club, the doormen didn't think much about a young woman in a short green dress so they easily missed the fact she was concealing two hand pistols, a vile of poison and a dagger. She smiled sweetly as she passed but walked with a purpose once inside. The club was dark and full. The bar gleaming black bar was on the other side of the flashing dance floor where a large group of bodies pulsated with the music. Lining the room were tables, where men drinking brandy sat, talking in quiet murmurs or women wearing lethal looking shoes rested their feet.  
Natalia perched on the end barstool, catching the eye of the bartender. He slipped over to her and opened his mouth to ask what she wanted when his eyes trailed up to something stood behind her.  
"Wine. Red." The voice of Antonio Gravardas drifted from behind her and Natalia pretended to be surprised at his sudden appearance.  
"Antonio." She greeted, allowing him to place a kiss on her knuckles.  
He had a very calculating expression as he smiled back at her, his eyes scanning the rest of her.  
"Shall we?" He asked.

It wasn't difficult to lure Gravardas closer to his death. Once Natalia had inflated his ego and mixed that with alcohol, she used a special technique to coax information out of him: pillow talk.  
Obviously he didn't start relaying every detail of his dealings with Vloskov, in fact he thought he was being very secretive, but once he started talking vaguely about his 'business' in Russia, Natalia was able to unpick the important strands from his mindless talk.  
She trailed a finger across his bare arm her head was resting on to distract him from the fact that she was paying an immense amount of attention to his slightly slurred words.  
"There was a chance I wasn't coming to Russia, now I am very glad, for I have never seen such beautiful women..." He purred, trying to sweet talk her but all Natalia heard was the fact that the transaction between Gravardas and Vlokov was not pre-planned. So it was a last minute deal, that increased its importance.  
He unknowingly betrayed more of his secrets: he was unsure how long he was needed in Russia (meaning the deal hadn't been broken yet, so his trip to Russia was purely to see if a deal could be struck with Vloskov). Natalia steered the conversation towards the "owner of the lovely club you were able to get us into". At this, he vaguely boasted his many connections before slipping that Vloskov and him were good friends (as mobsters and arms dealers didn't have 'good friends', this meant that Vloskov was trying to butter Gravardas up, until he got what he wanted then he would most likely get a hit on Gravardas. Too bad Natalia had got there first.)  
As expected to Natalia, Gravardas' phone began to buzz from the pocket of his trousers strewn on the floor. She figured it would be Vloskov: no mobster enjoyed the feeling of a stray arms dealer inside his own club. Well, none that she knew to date anyway.  
Natalia had already decided that poison would be the most efficient way of killing Gravardas so when he excused himself to take the call, she slipped from between the sheets, stepped back into her dress and pulled out the small vial of Belladonna, otherwise known as Deadly Nightshade from where it was strapped between the cups of her bra.

She had only tipped the vial over Gravardas' glass of wine when the very man walked back in, too soon from what should have been an unfriendly conversation with a Russian mobster. The purpose of his return was to laugh about something that was sticking to the door but the amused expression quickly fell from his face when he saw the vial in the Black Widow's hands. She had frozen, not at the sudden appearance of Gravardas, but at the very thing he had found amusing in the first place: the thing that was stuck through the door was a sleek black arrow.  
Her heart jumped into her mouth after all the air vanished from her lungs. Her mind had gone too far into shock and panic that she almost didn't register Gravardas charge at her in a sudden fit of rage. She ducked just in time as his hands grabbed at the air where her neck had just been. She used his chest as a boost to flip herself over the bed at the same time as knocking the wind from him. She grabbed one of the bed's post and spun around it, kicking the soul of her foot into his jaw and disconnecting it.  
But only part of her mind was on defending herself. The other part was dominated by thoughts of arrows and what they meant. Every spy, assassin and henchman in the world knew what that arrow meant: it meant trouble, it meant you were marked. It meant Hawkeye knew where you were.


	2. Chapter 2

It was irrational. It was illogical. It was the dumbest thing she had done in a long time, but Natalia's thoughts were now completely taken up with the arrow sticking out of the bedroom door, that once she had dealt the blow to Gravardas' head that knocked him out, she forgot to actually kill him. Her feet automatically carried her to the door, and once her thoughts became solely about the arrow, and Gravardas' body was out of her peripheral vision, she forgot he was even there.  
Her fingertips hovered over the thin weapon, not daring to touch it. Then she pulled herself together; the sight of her hesitant hand angering her. She was the notorious Black Widow for Pete's sake; a measly arrow couldn't throw her. She ordered her pathetic hovering hand to grab the arrow and ripped it from the door, leaving a splintered cut in the wood.  
She slipped through the door and down the corridor, her mind far from the unconscious, yet breathing, man she had left behind her. A mistake that would cost her dearly.  
She swiftly moved past the elevator and towards the stairs, knowing better than to trap herself in a hanging, confined space when there was someone out to kill her.  
The arrow could have had two purposes: the first, that Gravardas would go to laugh about it with Natalia and find her tipping poison in his glass; which he did, and then kill her, which he didn't. Natalia, doubted this was the primary reason for him leaving the arrow; it was juvenile and lazy, hoping someone else would do your dirty work. But the only other reason she could think of was that he was leaving her a message, was trying to scare her. But what sort of assassin let their mark know they were being marked? It was as dumb as falling back to a distance instead of getting closer to a mark. It was infuriating.  
She flew down the stairs, deliberately putting him from her mind. There was no point in dwelling on her aspiring killer's behaviour if she was going to get out of this alive. And she was going to get out of this alive. She realised it was more than just her survival instincts trying to avoid death; it was an innate stubbornness that flared at actually being challenged: there was someone cocky enough to actually think they can get a hit on her? She wasn't the most feared assassin in Russia for no reason.  
She realised her mistake when she reached the bottom of the stairs and heard a yell of rage from the upper level. Antonio Gravardas was still alive. Alive and very, very angry.  
She peered into the main club and saw Vloskov on the other side of the dance floor looking extremely annoyed and shoving his henchmen off to carry out some order or other. She had an inkling that she was part of their orders.  
Another door lead down a corridor with doors leading off to the wine cellar, the kitchens and other rooms that didn't have windows in the doors. The arrow clutched in her right hand served useful as Vloskov's suited employees appeared in front of her, attempting to stop her from escaping. One man got an arrow hole in the neck, another got sliced and diced with its tip before she put her heeled foot in his face. She sent her Bites flying from her wrists, soaring into her targets, dead on.  
She ran into the kitchen, causing its staff to become very surprised as gunshots followed her in. Sliding on her knees under the counter, her green dress trailing behind her. She was not in the right attire for this.  
She had just reached the back door when something behind her exploded, pushing her through the door at a speed she was not expecting. One of the henchmen must have caught his gunshot on the gas. Dumb ass.  
Her sudden burst of explosion-fuelled speed almost made her run into a thin pole that was being swung towards her. But her training had given her the eye for noticing things quickly and she grabbed the pole before it smashed into her face. She pulled the pole up and tried to twist it out from her assailant's hands but they had a hard grip and it wouldn't give. Her fingers tightened stubbornly around it too and kicked the man in front of her in the stomach. He spun her around as they both held the pole, their hands grasping it so it was a horizontal bar dividing them and she was slammed into the wall next to the blackened kitchen door she had just jumped out of.  
That's when she noticed it. The pole she was clinging onto wasn't a pole at all. It was a bow.  
Thankfully, her assailant couldn't use her hesitation to his advantage because just then, Vloskov thundered out of the door beside them, coughing from the smoke, and shot blindly in their direction.  
The shot missed, but it roughly pulled Natalia out of her momentary shock that came from realising who she was fighting. Not only was she standing face to face with S.H.I.E.L.D's infamous Hawkeye, she recognised him as the man from her photographs.  
She let go of the bow as he spun it around to Vloskov and smashed it into the side of his face. The Russian mobster was joined by an extremely angry Italian arms dealer: the vein in Gravardas' temple throbbed as his face got redder and redder.  
_"Voi! Ho intenzione di ucciderti!"_ He threatened in his mother tongue, his anger causing spit to fire from his mouth as he spluttered the words.  
Suddenly, Natalia found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with the man she was face-to-face with not thirty seconds ago as Gravardas, Vloskov and Vloskov's henchmen streamed from the unhinged kitchen door and advanced on them.  
She threw her Bites at a couple of henchmen and used a dumpster as a springboard to flip herself onto an unsuspecting Gravardas, trapping his neck between her legs and flipping him onto his back, leaving her to land in a crouch.  
Hawkeye had caught Vloskov's throat in his bowstring, pulling it in a way that made him instantly pass out.  
"Hey!" Natalia found herself yelling to the S.H.I.E.L.D agent before she even knew what she was doing.  
She dislocated the shoulder of the henchmen behind him before slicing the arrow she still had in her hand across his throat. She then threw it to Hawkeye himself as he tried to take down another one.  
She turned after shooting the last of her Bites at the last man, her breath coming in heavy, to find the tip of the arrow pointing straight between her eyes, and her breath caught in her throat.  
His blue eyes were narrowed as he looked down the shaft of his arrow: the arrow she had just thrown to him, _what had she been thinking?!_ Her pulse thumped in her ears as she registered nothing but the pointed, blood-stained tip of another spy's weapon; resignation folding over her. She jumped slightly when his aim twitched to the right, letting his fingers relax on the bowstring and the arrow soared past her. It landed in the heart of the stirring form of Gravardas who had been reaching for a fallen man's gun.  
Her mind reeled at the fact that she had just come so close to death and it was completely out of her control. Her still beating pulse derived from the fact that someone else had controlled her fate. She didn't much like the feeling.  
Her unblinking eyes never left his face but he seemed to be taking his time in bringing his gaze back to her. When he did, he finally spoke.  
"Black Widow." His voice tilted the sound of the syllables into an American accent.  
She opened her mouth to return the curt greeting when more shouts and men tumbled from the kitchen door and instead the yell "run!" fell from her mouth. She cursed herself for warning him as he would have been shot in the back otherwise and would probably have saved her a hell of a lot of trouble._ He is your enemy, fool_ she had to remind herself as she sprinted down the alley into the market square.

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**I was planning on taking this chapter further but I've had a sudden burst of unexpected (but lovely) followers and I didn't want to leave you waiting (because unfortunately, I do tend to prune my chapters for longer than it actually takes me to write them). **

**I hope you're having a good new year's eve fellow UK citizens (and to anyone else behind or in front of our timezone: Hope you have had/will have a good one)**


	3. Chapter 3

Her lone footsteps echoing off the cobbled ground told her that Hawkeye had obviously ran in another direction. In the split second of madness when she had automatically warned him to run, she was rather under the impression that 'run' meant 'together'. But she got her mind straight as she ran, kicking her shoes up into her hands before sprinting down another alley. Alone, she could survive this; together, she had a growing sense that she was not in control. She could only use the resources at hand and at that moment, they came in the form of the metal bars of fire escapes running down the side of the building to her right. She jumped, spun and catapulted herself until she was pulling herself up onto the edge of the roof, the sound of running footsteps diminishing behind her. She leaped across to the roof of the next building, catching sight of angry looking men below. But she was just a green flash to them before she had disappeared again. She needed to get to her safe house before she sent her information to her current employers. Hell, she might even get a bonus for killing Vloskov as well. She ignored the fact that she hadn't actually had a hand in his death, as far as her employers were concerned, she was the reason he was piled in a heap in a cold alley.  
She slipped through the window of an apartment, silently, as to not wake the sleeping tenants and grabbed the jumper strewn on the sofa and the jogging bottoms slung over the radiator. Letting her green dress drop to the floor and leaving it there, she pulled on her new disguise.  
It took all of thirty seconds, from her climbing in one window in a green evening gown, to climbing out of another in her newly arrogated disguise of jumper, joggers and boots.  
She made her way downtown once back in the streets, knowing that the clubs and bars will be crowded this time of night, spilling out onto the streets and creating the illusion for her disappearing act. She pulled her hood up, covering her vivid hair colour, diminishing the beacon of red that her assailants will be looking out for.  
She no longer heard shouting or running footsteps, bar the increasing noise of drunken bodies ahead, but she knew from experience that that didn't mean she was no longer being followed. Normally, she would wait at least twelve hours before heading back to a safe house after being chased, but she was not staying for longer than it took to grab her catsuit and the chip from her laptop.  
A healthy level of paranoia had her climb into her own safe house via the window. With a feline level of silence, she dropped from the ledge and changed into her catsuit, disregarding her borrowed clothes. She reloaded her hand guns before strapping one to her left thigh and the other to her right hip.  
She was prepared to leave, having secured her laptop chip to the pouch on her belt, when her eyes narrowed on a slight creak from beyond her room. She backed up to the window and peered down into the dark street, Vloskov's men nothing more than mere shadows on a life-size board game below. By their unsure movements, they knew she was in this general vicinity, they just didn't know for sure where. They were spreading out down the street and its conjoining alleys when someone ran from the building opposite hers and they all fled.  
Her narrow eyes widened at the realisation of what they were doing and she flew across the other side of the apartment towards the front door. She ripped it open right when a wave of heat, rubble and shattered glass slammed into her back, throwing her onto all fours. The ceiling dropped in behind her as she tried to crawl away from the side of the building that had just been blown in. Though dust and the water in her eyes were blinding her to the hole that she knew had just been ripped into the side of the building, she knew that the one opposite would be worse off, having been the actual host of the explosion.  
Her hearing faded back to full volume and she heard screams pierce the night sky beyond. She pulled herself along the rubble and fallen walls, her fingertips shoving away the bricks and shattered glass cluttering her path when suddenly, another sound joined the screams and yells from the streets below.  
"Hey!" Someone half yelled, half choked. She glanced up, coughing away dust to see Hawkeye looking down at her from the part of the roof that had survived. He was splayed on his back half hanging from the edge of the torn roof. He was craning his neck to see below him and flung down a black rope. Without hesitation, she caught it and began to climb. As she pulled herself up beside him, she realised why he couldn't move. One of his legs was trapped underneath a crashed metal beam.  
"What the _hell_ have you gotten yourself into?!" He coughed. She glared at him before roughly pulling him up from half dangling off the ledge.  
"Oh, _now_ you're interested." She hissed back before pulling on the metal beam. _Stupid, arrogant little... grrh, she should just leave him to dangle here off the roof._  
She was unsympathetic when a growl of pain slipped from his lips as she yanked the beam away allowing him to tug his leg free.  
She left him to peer down at the dark shadows that weren't running riot at the explosion, they were covered from all remaining sides of the building.  
"They have us surrounded." She said, half to herself but half for_ his_ benefit too. He rubbed his leg, pulling his trouser leg up to inspect the source of the blood that was staining it.  
"Who's '_us_'?" Hawkeye asked rhetorically, deeming his injury insignificant as he pulled himself up and limped to the edge of the building where wires, pipes and beams hung limply from the rip in the roof.  
Natalia's nostrils flared and her teeth ground. She wasn't frightened; merely _concerned_ at her present situation. She never thought one day she would be stuck on a half blown in roof with Hawkeye surrounded by a Russian mobster's henchmen. Her teeth were grinding at her frustration at the ridiculous scenario. Her nostrils were flaring at _him_.  
"...my bow." She suddenly realised he had been speaking and she looked up from the street she was observing to turn her hard glare towards him.  
"_What_?" She snapped quietly so her voice wouldn't carry down to the street.  
His jaw muscles twitched and she knew he was grinding his teeth. "My quiver. And my bow." He gestured towards her feet where they lay, along with the black rope.  
She snatched the weapon up but made no movement to pass them over.  
"May I remind you what happened the last time I handed you a weapon?" She put as much loathing into her voice as possible, though half of it was aimed at herself as she remembered throwing him the arrow in the alley outside Vloskov's kitchen.  
"I saved your life." He countered holding his hand out impatiently.  
Grudgingly and hesitantly, Natalia passed the bow and quiver over to him, joining him at the side of the building and keeping her guard up in case he tried to kill her. Again.  
"Came back to finish the job though." She stated coolly. He didn't argue: she knew he had been on the roof when the blast went off - he had either followed her here, or had been waiting for her to return so he could get the hit done.  
He ducked his head under the strap of the quiver and slung it across his shoulders. She observed him twist a little dial on the handle of his bow and an arrow clicked into place in the quiver. She had wanted to laugh at the primitive weapon when she first heard of it - what sort of spy hunted with a bow, seriously? Now she knew it was anything but primitive.  
As he did this, his steady gaze never left the spire of the church that jutted out along the silhouetted outline of the rest of the city buildings. She glanced over to the spire as he raised his bow.  
"You've got to be kid..." She started when she suddenly spun around, planting a kick in the neck of a bald man with a golden tooth in the corner of his grimace. She rolly-pollied out of the way of his lunging arms and landed in a crouch by Hawkeye's black rope. She used this as a weapon against the man's gun, twisting it around his wrist and forcing his arm backwards, hearing the sharp crack of an elbow breaking. She realised he had climbed up the fire escape when one of his colleagues appeared there and landed a punch to her back, throwing her forward and into the man who's elbow she had just broken. She ducked through his legs at the last minute, never letting go of the rope attached to his wrist, forcing his broken arm to follow her underneath him. He screamed in pain before being flipped onto his back, forcing the scream to cut short in his throat. His colleague got choked by her well-practised thigh grip and he tumbled forward in time for her to land in front of him and send her knee straight up into his nose. Her eyes narrowed slightly at the back of his neck, where a bare patch of skin showed from beneath his hairline.  
"Go!" She ordered Hawkeye seeing he had already shot the arrow at the spire. It had left behind a trail of zip wire that he had attached to their building. He hung his bow across the wire and jumped from the building just as she threw her arms around the back of his neck. They zipped over the streets, the cold night air blowing her hair over her shoulders. She had gripped one wrist in the other to form a lock on his neck but she had positioned her arms over his shoulders as to not choke him. Well, not too much anyway.  
Suddenly, they juddered, making their hanging legs sway from side to side.  
She had been expecting it to be fair - it was the obvious move to try and cut the line - but her lack of surprise didn't make the prospect of falling forty feet from midair any more inviting.  
"Get ready to drop!" Hawkeye yelled over the roaring wind in her ears. They were sliding down the wire at a diagonal anyway but they were still at a concerning height when the wire suddenly went slack and they both dropped like stones.  
Natalia deliberately positioned her feet so the balls of her feet would make contact with whatever she fell on first. The slope of the tiled roof of the church appeared beneath her and her feet made contact. Her legs collapsed beneath her and she tumbled down the tiles; half rolling, half sliding. The hard slates stabbed at her arms, back stomach and head until all she could register was pain. She stretched out a hand and grabbed the guttering when she was thrown from the roof. It helped by slowing her down a little but she was in too much pain to be able to cling onto it for more than a few seconds and she dropped straight to the grassy ground below. She rolled when she met the ground and only stopped when her back slammed into a gravestone. Black fog whirled around the corners of her vision and no matter how hard she tried to breathe in, no amount of air seemed to enter her lungs. She realised the groan of pain was coming from her own mouth and it died in her throat. She clung to the gravestone beside her when she tried to sit up as the whole world seemed to tip in all directions.  
"_Божией Матери..."_ She wheezed as she blinked most of the blackness from her vision. "Hawkeye...?" She tried to call but it came out as no more than a croaky whisper. She crawled to the church wall before stumbling to her feet, pausing for a few minutes to try to keep from collapsing. The notion of running away now and leaving him crossed her mind, but then she heard a groan ahead of her. Keeping one hand on the church to keep her upright, she stumbled around the corner and found him pushing himself up into a sitting position with one hand, while pinching the bridge of his nose with the other. His bow had dropped a few feet away from him, in a shatter of roof slate.  
"I think I prefer ground travel." She muttered, sliding down the wall next to him, trying to convince her stomach not to throw up its contents.

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**Thanks all for the reviews - I amtrying to make the chapters longer and appear faster (well, this is my longest chapter yet so one out of two isn't bad!) I just don't want to upload rushed chapters as that will please no one.  
****Happy reading! Hope you enjoy it.**


	4. Chapter 4

"How, could you have pissed off that many people in just one night?" Hawkeye asked rhetorically after regaining a normal breathing pattern. Natalia merely leant her head against the cold brick of the church, her mind going back to the bare patch of skin on the henchman's neck. There was a tattoo of ship with black sails. Very familiar black sails.  
"We best scarper." Natalia suggested. "Someone is bound to notice we knocked half the church roof off."  
Hawkeye nodded his agreement and they both got to their feet, using the wall as support. It was only when the Black Widow had half limped to the church gate that she realised she had no idea where she could go. If she could, she needed to get out of the city. Suddenly, Hawkeye muttered something as he collapsed his bow and stored it in his quiver. "I know a place." He nodded down the road and started to lead the way.  
The "place" turned out to be a grotty back entrance to a cheap looking night club. It had boarded up windows where panes had been smashed and splintered, peeling window frames. The steps down to the back door had binbags at the bottom that smelled about as good as a blocked gutter.  
"Bet you bring all the girls here." She muttered sarcastically as Hawkeye tapped a deliberately rhythmic knock on the door. There was a slight shuffle from the other side before a croaky voice asked: "Who is it?"  
Hawkeye's eyes rolled in annoyance. "The bloody President, who'd d'you think?"  
The door opened a smidge and half a face appeared in the gap. A greasy, stubbly half a face.  
"How do I know it's you?" The man asked in the same croaky voice. He pronounced his syllables in a different style; an accent. It sounded Welsh.  
Hawkeye bluntly gestured to his own face. "Because of this." He said as if the man was an idiot, which was the impression Natalia was forming. Without waiting to be invited in, Hawkeye budged past the man and Natalia followed.  
"Aye, aye, who's your friend then Hawkeye?"  
The inside of the bar was about as bright as the owner's personality. The lights were dim and most of the surfaces were stained and the bar still had empty bottles littering it. There was also a dank, musty smell that probably derived from the alcohol and the sweaty bodies that had been there a few hours before.  
Suddenly looking exhausted, Hawkeye shrugged out of his quiver straps and placed it upon the bar that he sat at. Natalia ignored the owner who had begun to look slightly awkward at being ignored and the new silence. She furrowed her brow, trying to think of her next step. She needed to confirm whether her growing suspicions about Vloskov's henchmen were correct. Stepping into Hawkeye's peripheral vision, she stated: "I need a computer."  
He looked up at her from beneath his brows, rubbing a hand over his chin. "And I need to report the assassination of the Black Widow to my superiors." He responded, though Natalia couldn't see any immediate danger in the man who had just set down his weapon.  
"Computer first. You can try and kill me later."  
He sighed, grabbed his quiver again and started to lead the way behind the bar where a door lead to a cold narrow staircase.  
"Oh, don't mind me. I'll just wait up here, shall I...?" The man started to grumble but his voice faded as Hawkeye lead Natalia into the cold basement which at first glance, looked just like any other wine cellar. Then she noticed the black grate at the far end of the room. Hawkeye slid the grate to one side to reveal the other half of the cellar, only the racks of wine had been replaced with tables of laptops and shelves of various weapons.  
She was partly surprised that he would help her at all but ignored the emotion and sat straight in front of one of the screens, digging her computer chip out of her belt.  
She had been approached a few weeks ago by her current employers, who's identities she had not needed to know. They gave her the mark Antonio Gravardas as he was selling weapons to their rival, Dimitri Vloskov. This scenario was not unfamiliar to her. On a daily basis, people were finding threats, whether they were Italian arms-dealers or Russian mobsters, and wanted those threats to _disappear_.  
But Natalia had seen a tattoo of a ship with black sails once before: on the wrist of a low-ranking henchman who worked for her current employees, and she knew for a fact that he had a twin with the exact same tattoo on his neck. So why, if he worked for her current employers, would Tattoo be coming after her in the disguise of Vloskov's henchman? Natalia utterly dismissed the chance that it could be a coincidence: she learnt a long time ago, there are no such things.  
She flicked through the intelligence she had been given on Gravardas and Vloskov and all of her own background checks. Everything so far worked out: Gravardas really was making an arms deal with Vloskov.  
She wasn't revealing anything to Hawkeye that he probably hadn't already figured out, else she wouldn't have allowed him to stare from behind her.  
She had a growing suspicion about why her current employer's henchman was one of the men trying to kill her but she wasn't one to shoot without being absolutely certain. She needed to find Tattoo.  
Slipping the chip back into her belt, she stood.  
"Are you going to kill me now?" She asked, making it obvious she was about to leave.  
Hawkeye merely stood with his arms folded by the door.  
"How about I give you a ten second head start?"  
Natalia almost cracked a smile and walked back through the black grate.  
"Why don't you make it easy on yourself and make it five?" She called back before she leaving him standing in a cold cellar.

* * *

Natalia found re-tracing her steps the best place to start in confirming her suspicions and that lead her back to the twin with the black sails on his wrist. It took nearly six hours for her to find an opportunity to get him alone. She had spied on him working all day at the Casino in which her current employers operated. He was a bulky sort of lad in his late twenties with a buzz cut of brown hair. As soon as he left the casino, she tailed him all the way back to an apartment on the other side of town. She had acquired a long coat with a furry hood which she used to conceal her face when she followed him into the elevator. It was a blustery, chilly day so she didn't stick out.  
She remained at the elevator when he began walking down the corridor to room 29a and didn't follow him in until ten minutes later.  
His apartment was simple and evidently he lived alone. There were floor to ceiling windows revealing the grey sky outside and a bare kitchen with pots in the sink. She heard the running of water as the shower was turned on in an adjacent room. She figured she had less than ten minutes to find anything that was worth knowing.  
She found an iPad and scrolled through the most used contact, which came under the name of Fil, and memorised the number. She searched for any documents under the name of Black Widow or even Natalia Romonova but came up empty handed. She had expected no less: Tattoo was just a low-ranking henchman, someone to look tough and do the heavy-lifting.  
Going over to the kitchen sink, she turned the hot tap on full blast. It only took a few seconds for her to hear the groan of a man whose shower had just turned ice-cold. She only turned the tap off again when she heard him stumble out of the bathroom and into the living room.  
She lowered her hood, a motion that caught his eye and he did a double take through the kitchen door, gasping slightly.  
"Who are you?" He asked, obviously annoyed and trying to intimidate as much as a man dripping wet and wearing nothing but a bath robe could.  
"You don't know who I am?" Natalia asked innocently. It triggered a masculinity boost and he advanced as if going to grab her to throw her out.  
"Look lady, you've picked the wrong apartment to break into..."  
"Oh but you invited me in." Natalia responded, breaking out of the innocent tone she had adopted and grabbing his outstretching hand. She twisted it to make him drop to his knees and stretched out her leg to bring her foot into his throat. "Right about the time your brother was sent to kill me."  
He didn't respond verbally to her words but his physical reaction was satisfying enough. His cheeks paled considerably and his pupils dilated and underneath her fingers, she could feel his pulse spike in the wrist she was still bending backwards.  
"Now, I believe you know who I am."

**Sorry, I know it's short but I am writing the next chapter as I am uploading this so it shouldn't take too long to follow. Hope you guys are doing alright. Laters. **


	5. Chapter 5

Tattoo already had a broken arm and she knew it was in constant agony because she had tied his wrists behind his back with the belt from his robe. His nakedness was also a reminder of his vulnerable position.  
Before she left him, she snapped his phone wire so even if he could reach the phone, it would be as useful a light plastic brick. She also helped herself to his mobile and his iPad. Before, she might have laughed in the face of his terror when he realised who was standing in his kitchen or even left him with a light comment of how she now knew where he lived that would torment him until he moved house; but now, she was just pissed off. Tattoo's brother had been trying to kill her on the orders of her current employers. He hadn't said this in words per se, but Natalia had a very good skill of reading people's reactions, so when she suggested that her current employers were trying to kill her, his expression betrayed his lies.  
She marched down and out of the building, pulling her hood back up with one purpose: to find out why she was being set up.  
She hovered her finger over the little green button on Tattoo's mobile when she found _Fil's_ contact, checking she wasn't being tailed. When she was sure she had no shadow, she called.  
"Hey Benji!" A drunk voice called from the other end in Russian. "I thought you were getting ready for the party?"  
Natalia remained silent and waited for whatever information he would give before he realised he wasn't getting any answers and would hang up.  
"Hello? Helloooo? Benji, look dude just don't be late, else boss won't be happy. She's already miffed about the Black Widow getting away." Then he hung up. Natalia wasn't too surprised at the low ranking of these particular henchmen, they weren't coming across as the sharpest knives in the armoury.  
So, a party, a work do. She needed to get a dress then.

* * *

By four o'clock, Natalia was making her way into a mechanics where she spotted a familiar pair of grease-stained boots sticking out from underneath a bonnet. She kicked them, waiting for Hugo to slide out from under the car.  
"Ah, Francesca!" He beamed, his golden teeth glinting in the corners of his stubbly mouth.  
"Здравствуй." She smiled.  
Hugo whistled to one of his apprentices to finish up on the vehicle before leading _Francesca_ out the back and into the dull green porter cabin that had a peeling 'Office' label on the door. The blinds were permanently closed and only Hugo had a set of keys. Aside from being a greasy mechanic, Hugo was also a brilliant disguise artist and had the best collection of wigs Natalia knew. He lead her in and she began to peruse the different hairstyles. He could also fit her with another nose, bigger lips and a dimple in her chin if she chose. She opted all three just in case. After all, she was willingly stepping into the lion's den, she might as well do it as subtly as possible.

* * *

With her new facial features and blonde hairstyle, Natalia made her way to her third safe house within the city. She couldn't risk her second one as it was too close to her first, and that had ended up tasting an explosion set to kill her. Further away just felt all that bit safer. As she showered, ate and rested, and basically recharged her batteries, she waited for her encrypted laptop to hack into the casino's guest list for that night. There, she would add a 'Lydia Garmanara', her new guise. She would have to delete someone else from the list as to keep the amount of guests the same.  
By eight o'clock 'Lydia Garmanara' was making her way towards the lion's den. A den that was beginning to flash and light the darkening sky, beckoning wealthy customers like the fatal flame beckons a fluttering moth. There was obviously more security than usual; Natalia could see them posing as drinkers at the bar or lingering in the grand entrance as if they were lone customers waiting for their partners. Nonetheless, the heightened security did nothing to delay her smooth entrance into the casino; Lydia was allowed full entrance with not so much as a second glance. She thanked the man at the door in English, tilting her words into an American accent. This did not make her stand out as most people she came in contact with in the casino were not Russian.  
She stepped in between the huge black marble pillars that separated the entrance from the actual gaming room, the gleaming tiled floor turning into a rich red carpet beneath her feet. She had worn her boots as her black dress was concealing her feet so she was able to choose practicality over appearance.  
She soon found out what the 'party' was in the name of: a fundraiser, how noble. If any of the donations went to even a half charitable cause, Natalia would declare a new-found passion for train spotting. She found herself in the main fundraising party where posh dresses and tuxedos danced in dim lights or drank at the edges of the room, being introduced to whoever, all unaware of the fact they were funding the city's most notorious mobsters. Blissful ignorance.  
The top assassin was scanning for anyone she recognised from the explosion, particularly anyone with black sails permanently inked on their skin when her artificially blue eyes fell on someone in a grey suit, black tie and polished shoes. She could _not_ believe him.  
Her expression didn't even falter to show her increasing anger as she turned away from him, deciding to ignore the persistent S.H.I.E.L.D agent. She would deal with him later.  
She turned back to the gaming room and made her way to the poker table. It didn't take long for her to be joined by the more powerful and wealthy people in the room. These were the people she needed to track down as they were most likely to be the people that dealt with the underground world of illegal trading, mobsters and arms dealings.  
Four men and another woman joined her for the first two games which she deliberately lost by a hairbreadth. By what she gathered, the woman was already acquainted with one of the men as they were more inclined to speak to each other. Natalia made note of the acquaintance as it could mean they were connected through business.  
By her third game, she had already spoken to all of her opponents as Lydia Garmanara, the American tourist. The two other men had tan lines just visible under their cuffs so they were obviously not from Russia.  
She was being shuffled into another game when someone sat down opposite her. She didn't need to look directly at him to know that, figuratively speaking, the Hawk had just landed.  
Going by how his eyes scanned directly over her, he had no idea who she was. In fact, his eyes barely settled on the poker table as he was shuffled into the game. He gaze wandered over his shoulders and around the rest of the room. To anyone else, he looked like a man admiring the scale of the party. To her, he looked like a spy watching for guards.  
"Looking for someone in particular?" She asked politely in her flawless American accent, picking up her cards and keeping them close to her chest.  
He answered also in an adopted accent.  
She smiled slightly. "What part of England are you from?"  
"The South." He answered. "In the county of Norfolk."  
"Town?"  
His eyes finally settled and he gazed at her, almost analytically. She knew why. For someone who wasn't hitting on him, she was taking an unusual interest in him.  
"Diss" he answered without missing a heartbeat.  
She glanced down at her cards, analysing her best route to win the game. Because this time, she was going to win.  
"I'm Lydia Gamanara. Here on business unfortunately. Just bumped into a spokesperson from a rivalling firm, so excuse me if my hand is a little short in this game."  
Hawkeye didn't even falter. His eyes glanced at his own cards, not allowing Natalia any clue at all what he may throw down next. He flickered his gaze back up to her and she knew he was suspecting her.  
"What a coincidence. You know the same thing has brought me here too. I'm trying to negotiate a deal between my company and our rivals."  
He placed down his cards, showing a full house. The other players grunted as they placed their cards face down, knocked out by the competition but Natalia kept her cards in her hand.  
Her eyes travelled to the man and woman who she had been playing with earlier who had stood together and were about to leave. She would have to cut their guised conversation short.  
She placed her cards down showing a straight flush. "Good luck to you." With that, she departed, tailing after the man and woman who she was sure would lead her to the people she wanted.

* * *

**Hi, I'm sorry it took so long, but I'm back at school now and it's my final year (causing a lot of work!) Plus, after I wrote this chapter originally, I deleted it because it seemed a little sloppy so I had to start all over again. **

**Happy reading.**


	6. Chapter 6

The man and woman from her poker game lead Natalia to the foot of the stairs leading towards the first floor. She knew she was on the tail of the right people as guests were not allowed off the ground floor. She watched them go up, not immediately following them but allowing time for them to get their distance.  
She was anxious about following them upstairs because, if she was found, she would have a hard time explaining herself. She hesitated to drudge up any other options from her spy-moulded imagination, when she heard a slight clang behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see her not-so-English poker opponent leaning against the wall next to a grate leading to a ventilation shaft. Evidently, he had just tapped it.  
She looked back up the stairs before huffing and making her way towards Hawkeye.  
"How juvenile." She rolled her eyes but he had already prized the grate free and was climbing inside. She swung the grate back into place before following Hawkeye on her hands and knees as silently as she could through the square, metal tunnel. He paused as the shaft opened up above their heads and he suddenly produced his bow, notched a grappling arrow and let it fire up, leaving behind a trail of black rope.  
"Why are you helping me?" She asked almost accusatorily. In her experience, people didn't just offer help unless they had their own agenda. Particularly people who were supposed to be her enemies.  
Unless he had frequent moments of temporary deafness, she knew he had heard her but other than a slight narrowing of his blue eyes, he didn't let on. Instead, he pulled himself up on the rope until he could pull himself up onto the next level.  
Inwardly sighing in frustration, Natalia followed, once again thinking how child-like Hawkeye's supposed professional 'spying' techniques were. How he became one of the most feared spies in the world, she would never know.  
Their metallic surroundings caused every sound to carry in a half-muffled echo, so they had to slow their pace to be able to shuffle in silence. Though this offered some advantages as sound was easily carried towards them as well. They heard the voices coming from below them before they even reached the grate that looked down into the conference room in which the owner's were congregated.  
Sandwiched uncomfortably between her metal casing, pushing into her right shoulder and Hawkeye on her left, Natalia peered down into the room where the man and woman from the poker game had lead her. Their company consisted of another woman and two other men, but from her awkward perspective, all Natalia could remark upon was their hair colour.  
The woman who Natalia hadn't recognised seemed to have found something amusing because her shoulders trembled with the laughter that resonated up to the two spies.  
"You better hope you are wrong, Hardy." She said, though her voice held no humour. She addressed the man from the poker game. Natalia predominantly gave the woman her attention as it was obvious who held the power in the room. More often than not, the person who held the power was the bigger threat.  
One of the other men, a serious-looking black man with folded arms and a deep voice, spoke. "Be that as it may, our latest intel is that they _have_ formed an alliance. So, what are we going to do about it?"  
His gaze never left her face when she neared him and she continued in a quieter, laugh-less tone. "We had Barton sent here to kill her, not to team up with her." By the end of her sentence, her words were spoken with a hiss. "Our friend within S.H.I.E.L.D insured me that if he couldn't kill her, she would kill him."  
The name 'Barton' had slipped right over Natalia's head until the mention of S.H.I.E.L.D and then she had realised, that it must be Hawkeye's real name. This offered her a flaw in his armour, a loophole in the laws of their game. He was now vulnerable to her. But she dismissed these thoughts for later; more importantly, S.H.I.E.L.D had a mole. That not only made _him_ vulnerable, but his entire agency. Her apathy towards his reaction on the announcement of a mole within S.H.I.E.L.D caused her eyes to stay focused on the group of people below her.  
Her mind was thrown into overdrive as she took in the meaning of the exchanged pieces of information below her: firstly, Hawkeye - _Barton_ - had been sent to kill her, not by his agency like he had originally been under the impression, but by the very people they were spying on. Secondly, and probably more importantly, the woman below could only be Natalia's current employer: the woman who had set her up. She memorised the sound of her voice, her straight black hair, even the little diamantes on the toes of her shoes.  
"Laputa?" She suddenly asked, facing the poker woman.  
"When my people learn that Gravardas is dead, they will allow me to be broker to the deal and the exchange will go to you." She said, a similar accent to the one Gravardas had.  
"Allow them to learn it was the Widow who killed him." The black-haired woman continued before the door opened and a man stepped in, his coat and rosy cheeks suggesting he had just arrived from the outside cold.  
"We have found Yeltsin." He informed the woman. "She's onto us."  
Hawkeye glanced towards Natalia, as she hissed slightly in frustration. She was willing to bet her reputation that Yeltsin was the brother with the black sails inked on the inside of his wrist; the one she had paid a little visit to in his apartment that very morning; the one his brother had called _Benji_.  
Natalia silently gave Hawkeye a signal that it was their cue to exit and he gave a slight nod of the head, indicating he understood.  
"...extra guards on the doors, and for the love of Pete, get me Yeltsin..."  
Natalia heard the woman begin to order as she pushed herself backwards on her stomach, looking over her shoulder to see where her feet were going to hit. Things weren't looking good for Benji Yeltsin, it would have been a kindness to have killed him at the end of their little _talk_.  
She slid back towards the black rope and climbed down to the lower level, her boots allowing the sound of her feet hitting the metal to be muffled. She heard the faint thud of Hawkeye climbing down behind her as she slid past the grate they had entered in and continued on, looking for a further, less conspicuous exit. As half slithered, half crawled, she brought a hand up to the zip on her dress under her arm and unzipped. She had learned from the incident at Vloskov's that she would be better off if she wore her catsuit under her dresses from now on. As she pulled her arms from the sleeves, she stopped at another grate and peered through to what appeared to be a boiler room. A glance over her shoulder showed her that Hawkeye had already stripped from his grey shirt and blazer and was sporting his S.H.I.E.L.D uniform underneath. _Great minds_... she thought absently.  
She nodded towards the empty room and he slipped towards the grate, producing an arrow from a quiver he hadn't had earlier. He poked it through to place the point in one of the bolts sealing them in the ventilation shaft and, after pressing a button on his bow, the point began to spin until the bolt came free. He did this with two other bolts until the grate was just hanging on by one bolt and they were able to slide it to the side and climb down.  
The boiler room was no bigger than a large pantry with a boiler place in one corner, pipes leading from the top to various places within the building. Dusty boxes were also stacked around the floor and shelves with various cleaning supplies lined the walls.  
Natalia turned when Hawkeye landed behind her, sealing their evening clothes behind the grate. She wondered what on earth they were supposed to do now. She didn't exactly have a protocol for when she found herself in the situation of being set up by her own employers and then being assisted by the man who was supposed to kill her. When did the world's sense invert itself? She freed her red hair from its blonde disguise and peeled her fake features from her face. Her disguise would lose all purpose as soon as she is spotted in the Black Widow's catsuit, along with a man with a quiver full of arrows strapped to his back.  
As she de-disguised herself, Hawkeye stepped towards the door to listen for sounds on the other side of it.  
He looked back as she gently poked her blue contacts from her green eyes. "I have a proposition." He started.  
"Oh yeah?" She responded, only half listening to his as the majority of her focus was not poking her eye out.  
"A temporary alliance."  
She laughed, though she couldn't find anything amusing with his death wish. Flicking her contacts away, she looked at his deadly serious face.  
"Me and you work together? Sure, why don't you give me a shiny S.H.I.E.L.D badge and put me on your pay roll while you're at it?"  
His eyes rolled at her exaggeration but he never faltered under the aim her sarcasm.  
"Look, we either go our separate ways and track down the people who are setting both of us up, or we work together and get there a whole lot faster."  
He spun his arrow in his hand and placed it back in his quiver. She narrowed her eyes at his statement, she couldn't argue with his logic, though she had a mind to.  
She analysed the scenario: if they were going after the same people, then they would inevitably end up in the same place, they may as well take the same route there; it would be faster, more efficient and with two master assassin minds working the case, there would be less room for error.  
Grudgingly, she held out a hand. "As long as you don't try and kill me in the meantime."  
He took it in a firm grasp, the corners of his lips twitching, almost making a smile. "Deal."  
Natalia's lips inadvertently twitched too.

* * *

**(Just a little note to apologise for any mistakes, I didn't have time to proof-read much of it if I was going to get it up tonight)**


	7. Chapter 7

"Was the dress really necessary?" Hawkeye asked, sliding once more through the ventilation shaft. He was referring to the fact that Natalia had resourcefully used a mop, two coat hangers and a length of rope to hang her black dress in such a way, that when the next person opened the door to the boiler room, they would get a floor-length black evening dress gliding towards them at a speed that would make any henchman soil themselves. But it was more than just a child's prank, it was a warning: the Black Widow is here, and she is onto you.  
"That _dress_ is a message. A warning, if you will." She couldn't be bothered to explain to him her actions, and to be honest, she neither felt she had to.  
He muttered something about theatrics, making her eyes roll of their own accord.  
She was happy to be out of the confined space; it was requiring more and more effort to breathe in it. Not that she complained - she never complained about anything - but she felt relief draw over her when she saw Hawkeye go to unscrew the bolts of another grate. Instead of going up again, the pair had gone down. They didn't even discuss it much further than seemingly reading each other's minds. An _exchange_ was mentioned and that suggested money was going to be changing hands: they were at one of the city's wealthiest places so Natalia thought she had a pretty good idea where that money was going to come from.  
They dropped from the ventilation shaft into a loading bay where cars were parked, bins the size of small skips lined the wall and crates and boxes sat in clumps at the entrance, and in random other places. As she dropped on top of a large bin and slid down a stack of crates, Natalia noticed a door at the back, opposite the wide open entrance. On the adjacent wall, there was a grey sliding door with a button next to it: an elevator. They were directly under the casino now.  
The cause of their silent entrance was the group of people she doubted were stray gamblers, approaching the loading bay from outside. She pulled Hawkeye behind the bin as she looked over to the lift again and saw the numbers above it were indicating someone was coming down. As she expected, the doors slid open with a little _ding_, and the woman from the conference room upstairs stepped out. Her hunch that she was the biggest threat was slowly being confirmed: people who made frequent reappearances in her life were usually wanting to kill her. The 200 odd pound of S.H.I.E.L.D sat next to her was proof of that.  
Her black-haired, former employer had had time to exchange her dress and her little diamante shoes for a black outfit consisting of cargo trousers, boots and a black jacket. Though her hair and makeup suggested she was still playing hostess to a casino full of rich gamblers. The combination seemed an odd one. Natalia looked back over to the small group approaching their hiding place: two men, with dark hair, thick eyebrows and tanned skin. _Italians_. Natalia stored this information. First Gravardas, then _Laputa_, the woman from the conference room, and now these guys? She didn't believe in coincidences: something was definitely going down with the Italians. The glance she shared with Hawkeye revealed he was also coming to the same conclusion. The Italians were being chaperoned by four guards: tall, pasty and used to the cold: Russians. Natalia shifted slightly so she could see the black-haired woman go to meet the group of men. She was too far away to hear what they were saying but they didn't seem to delve into a vast conversation anyway. They merely exchanged a few words before the woman gestured back to the door by the elevator where they agreed to follow. The guards and the Italians disappeared behind it, momentarily revealing a grey staircase when the door opened. Before the woman could follow, there was a call from the open entrance and the rosy-cheeked man who had informed her of Natalia's little_ run-in_ with Benji Yeltsin appeared, chaperoning Yeltsin himself. He had been granted clothes and his broken arm was bandaged in an unprofessional sling.  
"Я не говорил ей ничего..." He immediately started protesting his innocence when the woman held her hand up to cease his anxious ramblings. She pursed her lips before she spoke back in Russian, as if the thought of wasting her breath on him was repulsive.  
"How did she know _who_ you are, _who_ you work for and _how_ to find you?" By this point, her teeth were truly gritted. "In the space of _one day_."  
Crouching next to Natalia, Hawkeye had the focused yet slightly vacant expression of a man who was listening to a conversation spoken in a language he did not know, and the Black Widow's previous assumption that the S.H.I.E.L.D agent knew Russian was abruptly corrected.  
Yeltsin opened his mouth to respond before his voice seemed to fail him and he shut it again, his un-bandaged hand was nervously fiddling with the collar of his jacket.  
Natalia had been so engrossed in the transaction taking place before her, she had failed to notice one of the guards returning from the stairwell behind her. She had shifted once Yeltsin and his chaperon had appeared so she would go unnoticed from their point of view. Unfortunately, this put her in half a view of the stairwell door, and apparently, half a view was all one guard needed to spot two enemy spies crouching behind a bin, listening to every word between a Russian crime-leader and her henchmen.  
There was no point ruining her reputation by being found_ hiding_ by a low-ranking henchman, _eavesdropping_ like a child. It was almost as bad as sliding on her stomach through a ventilation shaft, as if she was in an dodgy 80's spy film. With this in mind, she jumped up before the guard could utter a shocked word to his boss. His surprise caused the hesitation she needed to knock him down. In seconds, a bullet had been shot in her direction and she looked to see Yeltsin's chaperon had a gun in his hand. The only reason she could think he could have missed was the fact that he had an arrow sticking out of his ankle. Her eyes narrowed at the man now in pain. She knew she had made him deal not to kill her, but that did not include saving her life. Again. The sooner she could ditch him, the better.  
Suddenly, more bullets were being shot, the door to the stairwell burst open, bleeding out more guards, simultaneously taking away the idea of it being a possible escape exit. She jarred, punched, kicked and blocked before being suddenly yanked into the lift. The doors closed before anyone else could get it, but she immediately regretted being on the inside of the lift doors. She had just_ trapped herself in a hanging, confined space when there was someone out to kill her_, and she soon faced the consequences: a heart-stopping creak was the last thing she remembered.

* * *

Natalia blinked, trying to bring a hand up to her face to rub her blurring vision, but her arms weren't by her sides. The split-second of panic when she realised she couldn't move her arms was quickly diminished when she realised why. She looked up to see her wrists bound in rope, hooked onto a chain hanging from the metal ceiling beams. Pain pulsed through her fingers when she tried to budge her hands. She looked down to see the tips of her toes barely skimming the cold metal beam below her. Looking further past the metal beam showed her she was hanging above a room in the middle of refurbishment. Plastic sheets hanging from the beams below her feet wrinkled in the wind that came through the windowless frames on either side of the room and dusty boxes of tools were stacked on crates on the uncarpeted floor. She looked out the windowless frames that was allowing the wind to come in and bite her uncovered middle and the tips of her toes and fingers. The view would have been spectacular if it wasn't showed to her in her current situation: the city (good, she was still in the city) was lit up with the life that shouldn't be connoted with night. It pulsed with the night-lifers: partiers; fast-food restaurants; taxis. It illuminated the different shades of grey clouds hovering in limbo in their black background. But Natalia wasn't exactly here to enjoy the scenery, and the appearance of her black-haired former employer, swinging up onto the beams with a practiced grace, was an unpleasant reminder of that. She had long since put a name to the familiar fall of the inky hair; the mouth that turned down as if seeing something repulsive. But then again, the woman was looking at the very spy who had beaten her in every Red Room test, assignment and mission.  
"Hello Yelena." The Black Widow greeted her former employer; her former classmate; her former rival.


	8. Chapter 8

Natalia's mask never faltered. Not when the slither of panic leaked into the bundle of frustration swelling around the knot of anger bubbling in the pit of her stomach. She could feel strands of her auburn curls being plastered to her forehead with beads of involuntary sweat and her the muscle at the bottom of her feet cramped when she stretched her toes to try and take some of her weight from her pulsing hands. But still, her emotionless, painless mask never faltered as her captor scanned over her like she was a gleaming, slightly disgusting trophy.  
"Know why I have brought you here?" Yelena asked, Russian and comfortable; her words not strained or spluttered, but fell from her lips like she had all the time and patience in the world.  
"The view?" Natalia managed, speaking her mother tongue to make a change for that evening. She herself was even a little surprised to hear how steady and relaxed she sounded. She just had to ignore the numb pain in her fingers, the rope burning into her wrists and the muscles being pulled in her arms under the constant strain of her full weight.  
"No one will hear you scream."  
Classic. Once you are certain that your captee isn't going anywhere, you poke at their fear; coax it into consciousness to loosen their lips. It was school-book captor knowledge. It had been her constant rule-abiding, traditional trainee nature that earned Yelena second-place: she never revealed even a hint of initiative; everything she did was to the letter of Red Room training. This probably did more damage to Yelena than it did to Natalia: at least now Natalia knew why she was still alive - she was being interrogated for knowledge.  
"I see second place has treated you well, Yelena."  
Her captor showed no controllable sign of being affected by her words, but the little visible vein that pulsed in her neck was probably involuntary.  
"The famous, indestructible Black Widow, and look at you now: your partner has fled at the first sign of trouble, leaving you as nothing more than a spider, scuttling on the inside of a glass, trying desperately for a way out."  
"I work alone." Natalia responded flatly to her, frankly, poor attempt at getting a reaction out of her. Yelena had played the 'partner' card, evidently overestimating Natalia's connection with Hawkeye: they may have cut a deal involving sparing each other's lives, but if it had been Hawkeye captured, she would have fled too.  
"And it works so well in your favour."  
"The exchange will fall through." Natalia said bluntly, the two women fighting over control over the conversation like verbal tug-of-war. "You'll lose everything." She didn't even fully understand what she was saying but she knew she was making sense to Yelena because she cocked a thin black brow, almost in amusement.  
"Don't be foolish. With Vloskov out of the picture, the Italians are still looking for a deal, I will be the obvious person to broker one with. Which reminds me, I really must thank you for killing that poor excuse of a gang lord, I not only get his arms deal but his territory too. You have made me very powerful."  
In the Red Room, they were taught that everyone has a fatal flaw, and to become solely the master of your own fate, you must learn to hide it or control it, else one day, well, they don't call it _fatal_ for no reason. Yelena's was her pride. It caused her hatred of Natalia to brew over the ten years they trained together as Natalia wounded it, daily, by being better than her. Once again, it proved to be Yelena's downfall as she had just divulged pretty much everything Natalia needed to know, just to rub it in her face. Just to prove that she had finally, ultimately, at long last, beaten the Black Widow.  
Natalia looked up from pretending to prize her hands from their bonds, looking Yelena stone, cold in the eye: green on grey.  
"So, that's your play: the Italians."  
The shadow of confused panic only darkened Yelena's features for a second before she composed herself again.  
"Of course it is Romonova. Any decent spy worth their reputation would have figured that out."  
Yelena was also one to assume everyone else's fatal flaw was the same as hers. Natalia wasn't exactly going to weep for sorrow at the poor attempt to wound her pride.  
"You're right. I did already know." Natalia lied, a sudden inspiration coming to her. She was now officially, making her plan up as she went along. Great.  
The slightly raised brow and folded arms suggested Yelena was waiting. Natalia smiled, slyly. She knew what Yelena was asking: _how?_  
"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter now." She paused, feigning resignation before meeting Yelena's cold stare, unblinkingly.  
"Your so-called S.H.I.E.L.D mole has been helping Hawkeye and I all along."  
Yelena's arms dropped to her sides as she took in what Natalia had just revealed, missing the fact that it was completely false. Her lips pursed before she pulled a gun from behind her. Well, that had obviously pissed her off. Yelena was too experienced to know not to get in arms-length (in this case, feet-length) of the person you're about to shoot, so Natalia was out of the option of kicking the gun from her hands. In fact, Natalia was out of all the options her pain-riddled mind was coming up with and her mask momentarily slipped.  
Unexpectedly, and painfully, Natalia abruptly found her arms dropping to her sides and her feet balancing flat on the metal beam her toes had been stretching for. Her knees initially collapsed beneath the sudden return of her weight and she rubbed her wrists in a crouch, looking up at the sound of Yelena cursing.  
Her glance flashed towards the chain she had been tied to and her gaze did a double take. Her first assumption was that it had broken from rust or that the rope had snapped but a sleek, thin black arrow had buried itself in the dead centre of the knot of the rope, snapping it's strands, allowing them to untwine themselves and release Natalia. Another arrow shot the gun from Yelena's hands and it fell to the floor below.  
The feeling in her arms and legs had yet to fully return so when Yelena lunged forward, all Natalia could do was drag herself backwards, allowing Yelena's anger carry her closer before straightening her legs out and twisting them around one of Yelena's, flipping her to the side. The drop to the floor below wasn't big enough to injure her further than a few bruises, so Natalia leaned back, freefalling into a back summersault, landing deliberately on top of Yelena as she began to stand and knocking the consciousness straight out of her.  
She picked up the gun with cold, throbbing fingers and placed it in her own empty holster at her hip. Her gaze focused through all the windowless frames, turning into an irritated glare. He was making a habit of breaking his own protocol. All she saw was an empty night sky.  
She waved aside the thought of the increasing mystery of Hawkeye and turned instead to Yelena's unconscious body at her feet. She glanced back up to the arrow sticking in the rope above her, finding the sudden need to suppress a smile as a sense of deja vu rolled over her. She was going to leave the unconscious body sprawled at her feet alive. Only this time, it wouldn't be by some panic-fuelled accident all because an arrow had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared. She was going to let Yelena come for her. This was far from over.

* * *

She knew better than to use the elevator, and she didn't want to risk meeting anyone on the stairs, or in the rest of the building for that matter. Instead, the Black Widow stepped to the edge of the window, looking down at the 15 storey drop, the cool air flicking her curls over her shoulders. Then she jumped.  
She twisted, first with her shoulders, then torso, finally forcing her hips to swing around with them so she was freefalling on her back, looking up at the room in which she had been bound and hung like a piece of meat. The rush of the cold air snapped around her neck and back and legs, wrapping her into a freezing bite. When she knew she had fallen enough, she released the grappling Bite from her wrist. It shot straight into the frame of a dark window that she had just dropped past and she swung slightly from the new resistance to her fall. The cold bite receded a little as her fall slowed until her feet silently touched solid ground once again. She had landed in a dimly lit alley by the side of the main entrance to the casino. Unsuspecting guards were merely yards away from her. Fools.  
A voice appeared behind her. The only thing that didn't cause her to spin around in a ready-to-attack position was registering it was spoken in English with a familiar American accent.  
It said: "Impressive entrance."  
She turned, finding herself looking up at the man standing on the fire escape of the building next to her.  
She was in the mind to scold him for helping her - _again_. That she had everything under control but a growing sense of curiosity was making her eyes narrow and her words to change on the way out. "You came back." She said bluntly. It wasn't a question; she wasn't hoping for a cliché revelation of an undeniable connection between them both. But she would be lying if she had said she was used to people coming back for her. In her line of work, _no,_ in her _life_, once you fell behind, you were on your own. The very notion of returning for someone, especially someone who was supposed to be his enemy, confused her.  
"What d'you mean?" He asked, holding his bow out to her as if a swordsman challenging her to a duel. She grabbed it with one hand, grabbing the railing with the other and swung up onto the fire escape next to him. "I never left." With that, he turned and ducked into an open window. She stood in the open. Her eyebrows furrowing at his off-hand statement. _'Why?'_ was the main query making an appearance in her mind and she felt an uncomfortable weight drop in her chest: a weight that was caused by the sudden realisation: she _owed_ Hawkeye.  
If she chose to follow him through the open window, she would never be able to go back on repaying him.  
She took a breath and climbed through the window: she was not afraid of anything and as soon as she stood in the darkened building out of the cold Russian air, she knew she - until the inevitable day when she would repay him - owed Hawkeye a debt.

* * *

**I've had a message that the spacing or lines or something is messing up, but I don't think it's occurring my end so it might just be their computer - is it happening to anyone else as it may be something to do with the fact I'm using the Copy'N'Paste thingy to submit the story. Let me know, and tell me what you think of the story - thumbs up? Thumbs down? Don't care? Keep me posted. Thanks (particularly to those who have already given me reviews, they are all wonderful and appreciated!)**


	9. Chapter 9

"Why were you at the casino tonight?" Natalia asked, wanting at least some answers. The pair of spies had no choice but to go underground, as they had, in the space of one day, become wanted dead by two different nations: very miffed Italians as Natalia was sure that Gravardas' death would be put on her; and of course the Russians, following the lead of a very angry woman with a lot of hatred to deal with. Natalia had a suspicion on how she was going to relent her hatred. The Black Widow and Hawkeye had climbed through the rusted scaffolding and boarded windows into an old bus station that had been shut down for refurbishments a few years before. Natalia had been beginning to wonder how Hawkeye knew this place was even there, let alone penetrable (though the moulded window boards and rusted padlocks didn't exactly scream: 'mission impossible'). As she jumped down from the window and into what looked like the ticket office, she found her answer.

"An old bus station is your safe house?" She asked, glancing from the sleeping bag on the sofa and the laptop on the desk.

"Well, when the stunt at your safe house went South, I figured I needed to make other arrangements." He answered booting up the laptop and taking the only seat at the desk. After automatically scanning for all potential exits, Natalia joined Hawkeye at the laptop.

"And in answer to your other question, I was at the casino because I figured re-tracing my steps was a good place to start looking for whoever was setting me up." His voice trailed off as he became distracted by the laptop screen, the glow illuminating his features in the dim office.

"You could have just gone back to America." She watched his side profile, trying to analyse every twitch of a jaw muscle or narrowing of his eyes, but he didn't betray any concealed agendas if he had any.

"True." He agreed. "But when you started looking back through your own mission details at Owen's bar, I suspected you were being set up too. I'm not one to believe in coincidences."

"Your reputation isn't built solely on pot-luck and a good aim then?" She muttered in response. It was unnerving how many 'spies' she came across who had no sense of initiative or any hint of a knowledge past the basic training.

Then she glanced towards the laptop screen and wondered whether she should retract her statement about his assassin abilities. She deliberately forced her eyebrow not to arch in scepticism and remained silent as to offer him the chance to explain why on earth he was looking at a website dedicated to the adoption of endangered wild tigers. Apparently, he sensed her unasked question because as he began to type a message in the advice box, he started to explain.

"I got a message to my handler this morning, explaining my suspicions. We decided that using radio waves to communicate would be too easy to hack." His voice trailed off as he dedicated most of his attention the his typing.

Natalia glanced from Hawkeye to the website and back again, unable to contain much more of her scepticism. "You're a high level assassin communicating top secret information to one of the world's most notorious spy agencies, using a public website about endangered cats?" She didn't bother hide her incredulous tone, it let him know that she thought he was an idiot. She also didn't ignore his mention of a _handler._ All she heard was _babysitter._

Hawkeye did not betray any feeling of irritation at her sneering tone. "The best place to hide something is in plain sight." He countered bluntly. She folded her arms on his frankly idiotic form of communication. Him and his stupid American proverbs.

_'I was told to put my tiger down, because of her angry nature but she has changed tracks and is working with me. I can't help but feel that I had been set up by one of my own when they suggested her be put to sleep. Any advice?' _Natalia read over his shoulder glaring at being referred to as his pet.

He leaned further back onto the chair, taking a stance one might link with someone who was relaxing.

She wasn't one to ask unnecessary questions like a child so she figured they were just supposed to wait for a reply. She half expected to have to wait for hours but as soon as she sank into the sofa behind him, he became active once more, leaning back towards the screen. Not wanting to be kept out of the loop, Natalia took over her previous position beside him, bending slightly to see whatever he was looking at.

A message had appeared under the name _Pacific Popsicle:_

_ 'You are dangerously attached. Follow through with said suggestion. Your own can be dealt with another time'_

Hawkeye exhaled sharply, though he didn't appear very shocked by the message. In fact, he seemed to have expected it. He moved a hand to shut the laptop down but after reading the unmistakable command from his superiors, the sudden movement caused her to instantly reach for her pistol and take aim. His hand hovered above the laptop, emphasising the innocent gesture. She had to hand it to him, he didn't even flinch at her gun pointing straight at his temple. She set her jaw and lowered the weapon she had stolen from Yelena. She found herself yet again, in a stale mate; a situation she was frequently appearing in since she had met this infuriating American. She could only see two ways out of it: kill him, or be killed, something her inbuilt stubbornness was not going to allow.

Her gaze never left his, as if any break in eye contact would break an unspoken agreement of not killing the other. Her eyes narrowed as he answered a question she hasn't posed, almost as if he could read her famously unreadable expression.

"I'm not going back to America until I find out who the mole is." He stated. He appeared to want to say something else but decided against it. Instead he closed his mouth to rephrase before continuing. "I could use your help."

Her eyes really did narrow on him then. He expected her to _help_ him after she had just read the message from his superiors ordering a hit on her? He almost expected her to _trust _him. Something she seldom put into anyone, let alone people ordered to kill her. Once again, he had succeeded in surprising her to the point of disbelief.

"Look at my pupils, you know I'm not trying to trick you." He said from the chair he hadn't moved from, allowing her to look down at him. She was already boring into his pupils but they betrayed no lies by dilating. Still, the top spies could learn to pass lie detector tests with lies.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Natalia put the stolen pistol back in the holster at her hip.

"Fine." She said, still trying to convince herself she was making a good decision, ignoring the fact that she was failing. "Fine, _Barton, _I'll help." She deliberately used his real name to exaggerate the fact that he was now vulnerable to her. One false move and she had the upper hand. The mild threat wasn't missed by Hawkeye as he smiled slightly. She bit the inside of her lip before saying what she had been going to tell him anyway.

"I know how to find your mole."

This time, his eyes narrowed on her, an action she realised she was not comfortable with but she ignored the feeling, burying it under mild confusion. To shake off his increasing suspicion, she picked up his weapon and threw it to him. Finally, he stood, slinging the bow and quiver over his shoulder.

She climbed back up through the window, using the sofa as a boost.

"What did you say your name was again?" He asked, though his tone suggested it was a futile question. He smiled when she looked back at him through the splintered boards, obviously finding something amusing about her expression. As she landed gracefully on her feet by the padlocked door, she heard him mutter: "Worth a shot" just loud enough for her to hear. She glanced over her shoulder as he dropped beside her and realised she was smirking. The notion was so unfamiliar, other than what she had seen pass between strangers on the street who were evidently close friends, that she wiped the expression from her face instantly. Instead, she looked back towards the early morning streets under the dark sky, trying to prepare herself for what she was willingly putting herself through, the presence of her enemy by her side, unnerving.

For what seemed like the umpteenth time, she asked herself what the _hell _she was doing.

* * *

**For my friend from 'down under'! Sorry it has taken so long!**

**(also I have typed this on my infuriating iPod which changes every other word because of damn autocorrect so any odd words appearing or poor grammar, my apologies!)**


	10. Chapter 10

Hawkeye had obviously been under the impression that Natalia had done what any other assassin would have done and actually killed Yelena before leaving the casino. But she wasn't just any other assassin. His previous assumption of Yelena's death became apparent when he gave the Black Widow a very pointed look after spying Yelena very much alive through the window to the bar in her casino. He crouched by Natalia in the block of offices they had broken into, where they had an almost perfect view of Yelena's bar.

"You meant to leave her alive, right?" He questioned. Though his tone suggested an air of joking, she still glared at him.

"Do you want my help or should I leave you to it...?"

"Ok, ok, I'm sorry." He offered before muttering, "I'm sure you have a perfectly reasonable explanation."

She decided not to rise to it and feigned temporary deafness.

"Does S.H.I.E.L.D have a limit as to the amount of people they let out in one go?" She asked, getting straight to the point. She was sure she already knew the answer; she doubted Hawkeye had come from an agency like The Red Room.

"It's not a prison." He stated.

She nodded. "So people come and go regularly. It's not uncommon?"

He shook his head in answer. Natalia had the picture of Yelena's paling features when she lied about the mole helping her and Hawkeye all along, printed in her mind. It would have been considered an overreaction to learn that someone that far away was helping them. But learning someone close at hand was helping her enemies would almost justify Yelena's poor control over her reactions.

"You think the mole is in Russia?" Hawkeye asked once she had voiced her growing theory.

"And our mutual friend over there is going to lead us straight to him." She muttered, looking back towards their black-haired target. Yelena was obviously licking her wounds with the help of some of her old friends: Jack Daniels and the finest Russian vodka.

As they observed their target's evening behaviour, they spied one car drive away from the casino, just to return an hour later. She also barked at a guard before he scurried away to complete her orders and took a phone call before the car returned. The driver of the car obviously returned heralding unfortunate news because whatever he said to Yelena caused her to throw the vodka bottle at him before storming out herself. Natalia was willing to bet that the driver had been sent to pick up the mole.

"Looks like our mole has gone walkabout." Hawkeye muttered.

* * *

Natalia knew her old training-mate would not rest until she had extracted some form of revenge on her S.H.I.E.L.D insider so between her and Hawkeye, they had eyes on her round the clock. It boded well for them that the mole had gone cold: nothing said traitor like dropping off the map. So now, Natalia was fairly certain Yelena thought she had been betrayed by her mole.

Over the next three days, Natalia and Hawkeye moved from the office block, to the roof of the night club next door, taking advantage of the bathrooms and sofas inside the buildings when they closed. All the while, they were doing their own digging on who the likely suspect could be. The list of potential traitors to America didn't seem to decrease as S.H.I.E.L.D sent spies on missions all the time. Any one of them could be in Russia with them, and Russia was a big place to start looking.

On the third night, Natalia had followed Yelena's right hand man, the deep-voiced black man from the casino conference room. He had lead her straight into a multi-storey car park. She waited for him to become active but he didn't move from his car once he had parked on the lowest level, 10 feet below the street beyond the barred narrow windows at the top of the cold brick walls. Natalia kept to ground level, by the slope that lead to the below-ground level where the black man had parked.

She had _acquired _a large fur lined coat as to not draw attention to herself as the average person did not walk around in a catsuit. Also it helped conceal the fact that when she _bumped_ into the suited man that started descending to the lower level, she had taken his wallet.

She returned to the street by one of the small barred windows by her ankles that looked down into the multi-storey car park. She couldn't hear what they were saying: she hadn't expected to, but the fact that the black man was conversing with the man whose wallet she has just acquired was proof enough that they knew each other. She found an I.D in the form of a driver's liscense with a name that was not Russian, nor was it one that she found remotely familiar.

Natalia turned her gaze back onto the busy street she was standing on and melted into the stream of pedestrians, becoming just another tired shopper.

When she found Hawkeye again, he was hacking into the American Embassy's files trying to drudge up any information on any lone Americans in the country from the past month. It was a long shot, they both knew it, been he wouldn't be demonstrating world-class spy skills if he didn't check everything.

"Here." Natalia said once she was back in the dim room of the night club's back room, and thrown the wallet to him which he caught one handed. "Yelena's right hand man met with him today." She informed him as he checked out the I.D. What she hadn't been expecting was his reaction to it. As soon as his eyes fell on the name his features darkened, his blue eyes narrowing. He was too well trained to betray the extent of his anger but in the five days that she had known him, Natalia had not seen any kind of unintended emotion rise to the surface. So his inadvertent portrayal of feeling told her that he was really pissed.

"You know him." She wasn't asking, she didn't have to, it was written on his face. Then the moment was gone; he took a steady breath, flung the wallet on the table and masked his features with indifference again, though there was something still shady about his expression.

"Yeah." He responded blankly. "I know who our mole is." He raised his hand to shut the laptop down before turning back to her. She was trying to ignore the fact that over the last thee days, he had sunk into the irksome habit of referring to things as 'ours'.

"So." She started. "Who is Phil Coulson?"

* * *

**I know, I know: it is short and not a lot happens but I have to set it up for what happens next. Review if you like, or even if you don't, keep me posted on your thoughts.**


	11. Chapter 11

Since Natalia's escapade to the multi-storey car park, she and Hawkeye decided to change tactics and keep an eye on the right hand man than the actual leader. So the next day, the two packed themselves up, leaving no trace of them behind. Without voicing it, they both knew that they weren't returning to the limbo they had sunk into between real, normal, everyday assassinations.

Moving around the city had become moderately difficult as Yelena was still looking for them, but even so, the pair was able to tail her and her large black employee to the docks the next day. Hawkeye insisted on melting into the woods by the boats bobbing slightly on the water's murky surface. Natalia wasn't a big fan of being so far away from where they had just pulled up into one of the loading bays. She didn't know how the whole 'spying-from-a-distance' thing worked for him, but it was doing nothing but fill her nostrils with the smell of pine and dirty water.

On the other side of the docks was the large loading bay where they pulled up and got out of their car, evidently waiting for something. They weren't waiting long as another car pulled up next to theirs and the Italians Natalia had seen at Yelena's own loading bay got out, accompanied by Yelena's own Italian friend, Laputa.

Looking back towards the water in front of them, Natalia was suddenly struck by a theory as to why they had been lead to the docks.

"The arms shipment. Yelena finally got the deal from the Italians." She voiced her theory to Hawkeye. Apparently, he had been thinking along the same lines as he didn't seem too shocked by her statement.

Without adjusting his statue-like stance in the shade, he nodded. "Here's to hoping she hasn't pinned the blame of their former leader's death on us then."

Natalia responded with a quiet snort. That's wishful thinking. Every man and woman in that loading bay would be after their heads for some reason or other.

"Who's 'us'?" She repeated the question he had once posed to her a million years ago on a broken rooftop. "You're the one who killed him." She muttered. She knew details wouldn't make anyone care, especially peeved off Italian mobsters, but she had surprised herself to make the slight joke.

She turned her attention back to the group of criminals on the other side of the water. Yelena had initiated the meeting and was now talking with her chin slightly raised. She half looked like she was dressed for a business meeting in a smart dark tailored suit. Her company was dressed similarly. Who ever said criminals had no class? It made Natalia want to snort, Yelena obviously had no clue what was about to go down, never looking at the bigger picture.

Hawkeye muttered for them to move as soon as they spotted a large boat appear on the water, slowly making its way towards the docks directly in front of the loading bay which their targets had gathered. Natalia ducked out of the trees that had been their concealment and silently jumped down onto the nearest boat, crouching as soon as she had landed to allow the small wall rimming the outer deck to hide her. Making very little noise, she slipped over it and onto the deck of the next boat, using them as stepping stones closer to her targets. She could hear Hawkeye directly behind her. The two hadn't voiced any plan but they both knew what needed to be done, thus their synced movements towards the loading bay.

"This is going to get hot." Hawkeye muttered as soon as they had stopped and crouched by the small box in which the steering wheel was on a white speed boat.

Natalia glanced around their cover to see the shipment of weapons was gliding to a standstill at the water's edge. She was suddenly becoming restless, her hands were shaking and her pulse had spiked: her adrenaline was going. She hadn't experienced adrenaline in years, all her assignments were morbidly the same. Identify target, get in, kill, get out, and at the end she always slunk back into the shadows, else known as her so-called life, by herself. Being constantly alone had never bothered her before, after all, it was all she had ever known, but somehow she found herself almost _enjoying _the company of the man sitting by her side. Or at least, she didn't detest it as much as she had expected to, and for some reason, it was making her feel the sense of excitement again. She was beginning to _live _again.

She ducked back behind cover and glanced at Hawkeye who had notched an arrow to his bow and seemed to be waiting for something. He met her green gaze.

_'Ready?'_ He mouthed. She nodded once, her agitated body craving to get into some action.

In one fluid movement, the S.H.I.E.L.D agent spun onto one knee and fired the arrow into one of the small windows of the boat before twisting the dial that Natalia had learned to be weary of on his bow.

Natalia brought her hands up to her ears, Hawkeye mirroring her actions, and an explosion blasted from behind them, forcing the speedboat they were crouching on to sway dangerously and smash into the next boat. Another unexpected explosion told them that there were explosives on the boat. Fortunate for them, not so much for Yelena who Natalia could hear shriek in outrage.

Natalia jumped from the boat and onto the decks, into a run, her adrenaline making her giddy for a fight but she didn't let it show on her face as she set it in an expressionless mask, running side by side with Hawkeye.

They had descended upon them in a matter of seconds, the heat from the explosion washing over them like a tsunami wave. Unlike them, Yelena and her new _friends _hadn't been expecting their cargo to suddenly blow up, this combined with their closer proximity to the explosion, had them all thrown to the floor. One man had even caught himself on fire and stumbled off the edge of the docks and plunged straight into the newly heated water.

Hawkeye had already rained arrows onto the unsuspecting group before a couple of the Italians tried to shoot him with hidden pistols stashed in the back of their trousers. Idiots. Natalia went straight for Yelena, breaking the arm of one of her cronies who got in her way. Though it was her and Hawkeye against four Italians, Yelena and her two accomplices, the ratio didn't seem to offer much of a challenge. Hawkeye had already shot two Italians, the third had plunged into the water and he was now dealing with Laputa and her crafty aim. What Natalia wasn't expecting was the stampede of other bodies running down the wooded bank towards the docks, raised guns and angry expressions.

"Hawkeye!" Natalia called as he had yet to notice from where he was taking cover and firing an arrow into Laputa's neck.

Yelena's gun slid over the concrete as Natalia kicked it out of her raised hand. She chased her over to the water's edge where the black-haired crime leader grabbed a thick chain that looked like it could do some serious damage in the wrong pair of angry hands.

A rusted hook hung on the end and came swinging inches away from Natalia's face. She bent backwards just in time, flipping over onto her hands and kicking her enemy in the face.

Suddenly, Natalia heard someone call "Widow!" But she reacted too late. She wasn't familiar with him calling her anything, let alone calling her Widow. Since knowing him, he hadn't had to call her, hence her hesitation. The warning was obviously for what came next: some explosives in the shipment had obviously been out of the grasp of the flame's fingers until now. The explosion forced both Yelena and Natalia off their feet. Natalia was able to twist to land in dog-eared crouch. Yelena land managed to impale her own shoulder on the hook she had been swinging at Natalia. Idiot.

Natalia tried to squint from where she had landed but no matter how much she narrowed her eyes, the blurry objects around her didn't seem to focus. Every noise around her seemed to travel through a thick wall of cotton wool before reaching her ears and she was vaguely aware of a new pain spreading across her left shoulder blade.

Then she was aware of something swinging towards her head and she only just ducked in time. Blood was seeping across Yelena's right shoulder, staining her expensive-looking suit. She really had no clue what had been coming.

As noise steadily flooded back to normal volume and the blurred objects stopped swaying in front of her vision, Natalia glanced back towards Hawkeye. The man whose wallet Natalia had pinched had appeared with the suited, angry men with raised guns. But Hawkeye was too occupied with the large black bloke and his bow had ended up strewn on the floor five metres behind him. He had adopted Natalia's lethal improvisation of his arrows that she had used on Vloskov's men after she had tried to poison Gravardas: slicing and dicing.

Yelena growled as she swung the hook back at Natalia and she had to rolly-polly to feet away from it. The black haired Russian grabbed a gun from one of the fallen Italians with an arrow sticking from his eye socket. Natalia jumped up with Hawkeye's bow which he caught and had an arrow notched in the two seconds it took Natalia to throw it and grab her own gun from the holster on her hip.

As soon as she had jumped up and raised her gun, Natalia was met with a stale mate. Yelena had suddenly got her gun pointed to the back of Hawkeye's head and was about to pull the trigger until Natalia steadied her own aim on her. Hawkeye's arrow was trained on the black man facing him with his own gun ready.

The man, _Phil Coulson, _looked at Natalia as if she had just dropped from space. His gun moved from her to Hawkeye to Yelena back to Natalia again. Yelena's narrowed eyes flickered from Natalia to Coulson to Hawkeye who was still in front of her gun. The movement revealed to Natalia her nerves and she flashed her eyes towards Hawkeye who let her know he noticed the gesture by silently and ever-so-slightly nodding his head.

Natalia's next movement caused a rapid chain of events. As soon as she thrust her pistol into the back of Yelena's head, Hawkeye spun out of the black man's aim and kicked him in the stomach sending him barrelling into Coulson. He called to Natalia again as a layer of bullets rained onto them from the suited men behind Coulson, and he shoved and hand into her back, propelling her towards the water. Coulson shouted something before running after them and as they both leaped into the back of the speed boat, Coulson jumped into the front and in seconds they were speeding past the barge on fire and away from the hail of bullets.

Natalia landed flat on her back beside Hawkeye, her breath coming in short bursts and was pounding in her ears. Her hands were still shaking from the adrenaline rushing through her veins and the giddiness caused by it made her eyes glint almost suggesting a smile. Hawkeye ducked his head lower to escape the few bullets that were being hopeful enough to still be firing, and also the ash falling from the burning shipment. Apart from the rush of blood pulsing in her ears and her own ragged breathing, all Natalia could hear was the quick, short gasps from the man next to her.

"Romanova." She surprised herself by answering the question he had posed not four days ago, and she was being honest with her answer.

"What?" He panted, twisting his neck to look at her. Over the sound of the engine and the crashing of water they were zipping through, their voices wouldn't carry to the agent at the wheel.

"My name... Natalia Romonova." She waited, holding her breath. She knew she would regret telling him later, and she _hated _regretting things. It made her chest tighten uncomfortably, as if waiting for an inflating balloon to pop. Instead of immediately using this new-found information against her, Hawkeye smiled, stretching an arm over to offer his hand. A gesture Natalia eyed warily as it was one she connoted with friends. She couldn't afford him to be her friend.

"Clint Barton."


	12. Chapter 12

**SORRY! - I know it has been a while but the combination of my looming coursework deadline and the fact my laptop has been in for repairs put the story on hold. But now I am back up and running so please bear with me and keep reviewing! Thank you.**

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She hesitated before accepting the handshake. The act alone weighed on her as if she had taken a step into unfamiliar territory. Something master assassins avoided like the plague.  
But she steeled all her nerves and doubt and took his hand in a firm hold. A second later, she let go, but a second was all that was needed for that line to be crossed. A line that she knew she would not understand to be positive or negative for her until later. Until the man at the wheel would cut the engine and turn towards them.  
She saw Hawkeye glance at her from the corner of her eye when the engine's noise suddenly and deliberately went dead but she didn't shift her gaze from the suited man taking the few short steps towards them.  
She stood, not liking the feeling of vulnerability that came from lying down in front of a man that could potentially be her newest enemy, and waited. Beside her, Hawkeye stood too, shoulder-to-shoulder, as if waiting for a verdict. They had stopped in a limbo-like stance in a sea-covered No Man's Land, their only ground and refuge bobbing slightly on the waves.  
The man she knew to be Phil Coulson looked from her to Hawkeye, words appearing to fail him for a while. Neither she nor Hawkeye offered to speak first. They just waited.  
"You _realise_," He started, speaking to his charge "that apart from blowing your own mission _completely_, you almost blew _mine_ as well." His voice seemed strained, as if the attempt to remain composed was starting to be a struggle.  
Hawkeye opened his mouth to respond before closing it again. Apparently, he was struggling to come up with his wording.  
"We thought." He started before changing tact. "..._ I_ thought that you were liaising with Russian spies."  
Coulson really did become lost for words then. His temper didn't seem to cool down with this knew information either.  
"You _were_ supposed to be in Italy." Hawkeye added when Coulson looked like he would be unable to contain his anger any more.  
"Firstly," Coulson finally got out after breathing a fair few times. His composure was improving. "_that_ is classified information way above your pay grade," Although it was a statement, Natalia picked up on the question being asked: _So how do you know about it?_. "and _not_ to be mentioned in front of outside company."  
Natalia's mask of emotionless indifference never faltered when she was finally acknowledged from an enemy spy.  
To his credit, Hawkeye didn't look remorseful or angry or ashamed when being the target of his handler's rage and accusatory glare. Instead, a shadow of resignation flickered across his features.  
"I... heard rumours." He responded to Coulson's unasked question. "As for present company," He neither glanced nor gestured towards her but continued talking as if she was not there, something Natalia was grateful for as it would have given her the feeling of her being part of a childish duo being punished by a disapproving adult. "We both uncovered a plot to set us both up and the existence of a mole within S.H.I.E.L.D. The Black Widow and I formed an agreement."  
Though Coulson had gained composure, or at least successfully masked his anger, Natalia sensed Hawkeye's words were not at all expected.  
"An _agreement_?" He began sceptically before adding, "And a mole?"  
Hawkeye's shadow of resignation darkened. "There is a mole within S.H.E.I.L.D. He or she formed an alliance with Yelena to bring me to Russia so that the Black Widow could kill me or vice versa. Then... you appeared."  
Natalia observed Coulson's eyes narrow a fraction before widening again and his jaw clench. "And of course, you assumed _I_ was the mole?" Again, his anger flared. His loyalty to his employers was obviously strong for him to feel even the slightest bit affronted at being accused of treason. Natalia's motives have always been second-guessed so she was no stranger to being accused of treachery, but she cannot recall any strong feelings towards the accusations.  
"You were supposed to be in Italy." Hawkeye repeated. "And you were seen with one of our targets."  
Coulson let this sink in for a minute. His gaze shifted to Natalia who didn't break the eye contact to even blink. Within seconds of speaking again, he appeared to make a decision and looked back to Hawkeye.  
"Loucas Grecovich is a S.H.I.E.L.D asset." He stated. Natalia's mind whizzed so she could keep up with the information being exchanged between the two men, not wanting to be lost in a verbal maze of unrecognisable names and other undetectable data. In the split second it took her mind to stop whizzing, she realised 'Loucas Grecovich' must be the tall, black man with whom Coulson had spoken to in the car park. "He has been helping us keep up-to-date with the connection forming between known Italian arms dealers and our Russian enemies. My mission was to stop the exchange happening between the two known parties. It had no previous impact on _your_ mission, Barton."  
Natalia's mind didn't need to whiz for her to understand what Coulson was saying: he had his mission and Barton had his. They weren't supposed to get mixed up together. After all, since when did killing the Black Widow have anything to do with a weapons exchange intervention?  
The cold air of the open space in the middle of the bare patch of water surface they were currently floating on was starting to get at Natalia. It stroked the loose red curls from her neck and was making the tips of her ears turn numb. Not that she made any movement to complain. She was in an extremely foreign situation, she was in the midst of two men who want her dead but neither was making any movement to attempt the hit. She had never been taught nor had she ever learned any protocol for this sense of frozen restlessness, this hovering impatience. She was neither moving nor was she stationary, she was both agitated and relaxed. For as long as she was on this boat with these two men, she was in the stage of falling - not being pushed, not impacting - she was bracing herself. The unfamiliarity of this territory was making her heart beat just that little bit faster. It was uncomfortable.  
Apparently, neither Coulson or Barton had a protocol for this either. The former seemed to sag a little, as if the weight of the worlds had just been discarded on his shoulders. Or the weight of the responsibility for his entire agency. Finally, he turned his full attention onto her.  
"Weapons." He said curtly. She had expected it and uncharacteristically, she had no intention of disobeying. As she passed over her pistols and the blades strapped to her legs underneath her boots, she divided a part of her attention to watch the movement of her weapons like a hawk once they were in his possession. Like every other person she encountered, Coulson seemed to pass her 'bracelets' off as being nothing more than decorative, and completely missed the fact that they could shoot off paralysingly painful shocks to anyone she aimed them at. She did notice that Barton did not interject when she didn't offer this information up to him. He had seen with his own eyes what her Bites could do, and yet he was ignoring the fact that she hadn't handed them over. She didn't dwell on the act of mutinous secrecy.  
She tried not physically react when he suddenly threw her weapons overboard. For someone who could switch her emotions off like a light, she had grown attached to those lethal pieces of metal instruments. One of her choosier insults almost fell from her mouth but she bit it back, tearing her slightly narrowed eyes from the patch of disturbed water and looking back to Coulson.  
Her dismissed doubt of Hawkeye's intentions were forced upon her again when Coulson asked for her name. She herself had no idea if she was going to give up her true identity for the second time that day or if one of her many aliases would have slipped from her lips. All she knew was that before she could even make the decision that could cost her everything or be her only last saving straw to clutch, Hawkeye answered the hanging question.

"Romonoff." He said, he _lied_. "Natasha Romonoff."


End file.
